Black Oak's Daughter

I don’t make New Years resolutions.  Deciding to do something solely because of the date isn’t reason enough for me to consider it, unless I was already considering it, which, this year, didn’t really happen.

I have discovered a few things about myself these last couple of weeks.  I started writing about it a few times and ran out of steam before I got it right enough to publish, so I’ll summarize them here and delete those drafts.

First of all, I’m very blessed. Apparently I have everything that I need, because when I went to spend the gift certificates that I received for Christmas, I couldn’t find anything beyond the practical.  At Kohls I bought socks with my $10 in Kohls cash. TJ Maxx was mostly new kitchen towels and I bought a matching salt mill and pepper mill for the dinner table. The $50 visa card went to Home Depot and bought things like furnace filters and light bulbs. Then I spent $50 on a game for my Wii, so I guess I could have done that the other way around so that I can tell my friend that I bought Mario Brothers and not a new toilet seat.  Although that friend might like the irony

I’m also blessed to have the man that I have in my life. He builds furniture for a living, and for Christmas he made me a beautiful new kitchen table.  I’ve never had anyone build me furniture before. That’s really cool.   It’s a little frustrating that he’s so non-verbal about how he feels about me, but then he goes and does sweet stuff like that.  He cares, that’s how he shows it.  The old broken down table went into the trash, and we’ve had a few conversations about the wood and the finish on the new one. It’s during those conversations that his passion for woodworking shows. He’s a master at his craft, it’s wasted on the monkey work that he does for profit, but everyone has to make a living. In any case, that is one of the coolest Christmas gifts I’ve ever received.

Now that the holidays are over and all the goodies are almost gone, I’m thinking again about taking steps to  improve my physical health.  Minime has a spare bodybugg that I’ll try for a month or two. It’s kind of a cool little high tech gadget that you wear 24/7  that measures metabolism.  That will give me some good information/feedback.  I’m also thinking about taking steps to control my finances a little better. I’ve been slowly creeping back into credit debt, so that ends after this weekend and I’ll take better measures than I have been to get and stay out of credit debt.

Hopefully the cats will cooperate with that plan. My old diabetic cat needs minor surgery if I can get his blood glucose stabile enough to do it, and my young one with the bad gut is in transition off of steroids. She’s on antibiotics, but they only cost $15 a month, so that’s not awful. This is the third time we’re trying to get her off the roids, we haven’t been successful yet.  She’s doing ok so far.  Fingers crossed there.

Another thought that goes through my head at New Years, and probably the reason that I’ve never really been into celebrating it, is that yesterday was the 34th anniversary of my father’s passing away.  In my mind it’s more of a private little commemoration of his life; a thankfulness for the time that I had with him, and that he gave me life.  He still gives me a lot to think about. Part of the reason I’m so diligent about carrying through with the doctors with my medical issues is that he died so young.  As of about a month ago, my cholesterol and triglicerides are excellent. Those two things are what killed both of my parents.  I’m still cancer free, and once I get my kidney fixed, I’ll be good to go for apparently a nice long time. All that I have to do to get healthy again is work at it. I am physically out of shape. My heart, muscles, and all of that are way too used to laying around recovering from surgery.  All of the things that are wrong with my body are fixable. Losing weight is not the priority, but the side effect of a healthy lifestyle is that the pounds will come off.  I won’t miss them.   I do have a goal, but that it corresponds with the new year is completely coincidental. Next year at this time I’ll be in the Caribbean with my daughter and son in law.  I’ll keep the goal to myself, but I do have one that corresponds to that trip.  It’s good to have goals, but goals require a plan, which I’m also keeping to myself.  There is a plan in the works though. It will be fully in place and implemented in the next week or two.  So if you want to call that a new years resolution, so be it. The date for the goal is next year at this time.

I’ve spent a lot of the time off over the holidays getting more organized. I’m still progressing toward a useful peaceful home for us to live together and enjoy life. The baby steps all add up, and it’s getting better all the time.

Happy New Year!

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